Species
interactions within communities and the impacts of global changes on these
networks

I
am interested in the way that species assemble into communies, in particular
with respect to the role of species interactions in this process. I use
simulation-based models of species assembly to investigate competition-based
processes. I am particularly excited by the approach of including non-null
rules into such models to simulate community assembly, and recently was
able to do this for the ants in epiphytic ferns, showing that species
assembled on the basis of body size, with species being less likely to
colonise a fern when another ant species of similar size is present (Fayle
et al. 2015a). Using simulations of body-size based community assembly
I was then able to show that this process was able to explain interspecific
patterns of ant colony abundance. I am now interested in expanding this
approach to larger spatial scales. See Fayle et al (2008) for a review
of the work of the Insect Ecology Group at Cambridge on the ant-fern system
(now slightly out of date).

Studying
species interactions in anthropogenically modified habitats offers insights
into assembly processes, because disturbance can act as a natural experiment,
in which biotic and abiotic factors are altered. Over the last few years
I have been expanding my work to include comparisons of interaction networks
across environmental gradients. I have found that the by-product mutualism
between ferns and their ant inhabitants is robust to logging and conversion
to oil palm plantation (Fayle et al 2015b), as is the diet of the giant
river toad, an ant-specialist predator (Konopik et al. 2014). Competitive
interactions between ants also increase along this same gradient of habitat
disturbance, suggesting that "ant mosaics" (patterns of segregation
between dominant canopy ant species) are more prevalent in disturbed habitats
(Fayle et al. 2013). I am also working on building ant-termite predation
networks in relation to habitat disturbance, using molecular barcoding
of ant gut contents (Fayle et al. 2015c).

Natural
history observations are also important for describing new interactions
between species, and I have been involved in publications describing interactions
between ants and parasitic flies (Disney & Fayle 2008), kleptoparasitic
flies (Yusah & Fayle 2014), and between marasmiod fungi and canopy
invertebrates (Snaddon et al. 2012).

Yusah
K.M. & Fayle T. M. (2014) The first record of a fly
of the family Milichiidae (Diptera) interacting with an ant of the genus
Polyrhachis Smith, 1857 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Biodiversity Data
Journal 2: e4168 [PDF]